New PC

[glorybound]

How do these specs look?

• 2rd generation Intel Core i7-3930 3.20GHz processor; delivers outstanding processing power for your system
  
• 64GB of DDR3 memory; tons of resources to provide awesome task handling performance
  
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU; astonishing graphics using 2GB of video memory
  
• 2TB hard drive and 240GB solid state drive; enjoy storing lots of digital files amazingly
  
• DVDRW drive; burns DVDs and CDS with ease
  
• Liquid cooling setup; dissipate heat on your system quickly

[KAKTUSDIGITAL]

Very nice. Bang Vs Buck ratio looks right on. Is this going to be a HP/DELL or homemade?

[glorybound]

it's an iBUYPOWER for a little under $3000

Very nice. Bang Vs Buck ratio looks right on. Is this going to be a HP/DELL or homemade?

[AbeMata]

Do gaming cards (geforece) not do a better job at viewport speed then the quadros? I only remember the quadros outperforming the gaming cards with certain simulation tasks.

[Vizioen]

Do gaming cards (geforece) not do a better job at viewport speed then the quadros? I only remember the quadros outperforming the gaming cards with certain simulation tasks.

I bought a K4000 and I'm fairly happy with it. I made my decision based on this test: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...card,3493.html

[Guest]

• 2rd generation Intel Core i7-3930 3.20GHz processor; delivers outstanding processing power for your system - I assume this is the K version? So it can be overclocked. I have this CPU but I recently purchased an Intel Core i7 4770K and overclocked it. Its around half the price and surprisingly it rendered a 20 minute scene 1 minute faster than the Intel Core i7 3930K.
  
• 64GB of DDR3 memory; tons of resources to provide awesome task handling performance.
  
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU; astonishing graphics using 2GB of video memory. This is a really poor GPU and is old. Spend a little more money in this area and future proof yourself a bit. Maybe look at getting a TITAN as the latest Quadro cards are expensive. Also don't forget AMD, their latest GPUs are showing good performance results
  
• 2TB hard drive and 240GB solid state drive; enjoy storing lots of digital files amazingly
  
• DVDRW drive; burns DVDs and CDS with ease. How many discs do you burn/read? I ditched this in my latest build as I never use it. USB 3 memory sticks are cheap these days and services such as Dropbox make file transfer simples. This will save yourself a few quid.
  
• Liquid cooling setup; dissipate heat on your system quickly

[samuel_bubat]

I´d also go for gaming cards. Those benchmarks are not really meaningful for Max as max/nitrous uses DirectX. DirectX is usually way faster on gaming cards.
Also the Geforce outperforms quadros in many benchmarks. For example Iray (I could magine it´s similar with VrayRT).
The quadro 4000 only has 2gb memory.A geforce gtx770 has 4gb while it´s half the price.
I´m also not sure why a system like this needs a liquid cooler wich makes it unnecessary expensive.
In September there will come a new generation of intel CPU´s. New hexacores and even an octacore for the consumer market. The prices of the new CPU´s
are pretty similar on realease as the current prices. ~40$ more. Here is a price list.
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-07/e...e-prozessoren/

[Neilg]

I'd get rid of the quadro for a gaming card and i'm not so sure you need liquid cooling these days.
have a look at this - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
your quadro gets a score of 1900 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gp...pu=Quadro+4000
and for the same price you can get the highest scoring single 3d cards available on the market. the gtx 780ti would destory it in nearly every benchmark.

I think you can get the 4930 i7 for the same price.
I also don't know what you'd use 64gb of ram for, that's just going to cause issues on your machines that don't have that. instead of spending 5 minutes optimizing your scenes as you go, you'll end up sending renders and they'll choke on the limit taking significantly longer to render. I use fusion a lot which eats ram in an instant and i'd still get 32gb of better or faster ram.

[tricky]

Next time I get a new workstation, I think I might push for a dual XEON. Just another spanner in your works

[glorybound]

With VRay 3.0 and the Embree option, is it worth it moving away form intel?

Next time I get a new workstation, I think I might push for a dual XEON. Just another spanner in your works

[glorybound]

My goal was one screaming machine and no slaves. Everything on one SSD drive, so no network slow downs.

I'd get rid of the quadro for a gaming card and i'm not so sure you need liquid cooling these days.
have a look at this - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
your quadro gets a score of 1900 - http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gp...pu=Quadro+4000
and for the same price you can get the highest scoring single 3d cards available on the market. the gtx 780ti would destory it in nearly every benchmark.

I think you can get the 4930 i7 for the same price.
I also don't know what you'd use 64gb of ram for, that's just going to cause issues on your machines that don't have that. instead of spending 5 minutes optimizing your scenes as you go, you'll end up sending renders and they'll choke on the limit taking significantly longer to render. I use fusion a lot which eats ram in an instant and i'd still get 32gb of better or faster ram.

[glorybound]

4930 i7 = $600+
gtx 780ti = $700+
SSD = $400+
RAM = $400+
Motherboard = $1,200+
Case = $100+
Power = $50+

So, for around $3500 you can build this?

[peterguthrie]

My goal was one screaming machine and no slaves. Everything on one SSD drive, so no network slow downs.

in that case, definitely dual xeon

[glorybound]

How about this bad boy!
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/HP-...w6QaAnoP8P8HAQ

in that case, definitely dual xeon

[Neilg]

Motherboard = $1,200+

what motherboard is 1200??
e: oh, you're set on 64gb of ram. you're spending over a thousand dollars extra on another 32gb of ram. we work on some crazy scenes and render them on 16gb, only people who do editing even have 32gb at our place.